Steven Crowder infiltrates Antifa at Ben Shapiro event

John SextonPosted at 3:21 pm on September 29, 2017

Wednesday I wrote about the far left’s plans to disrupt a speech by Ben Shapiro at the University of Utah. What I didn’t know is that YouTube host Steven Crowder and his producer had infiltrated a local Antifa group and captured them on tape discussing plans and handing out weapons.

As you’ll see in this clip, Crowder’s producer Jared put on a disguise and met with members of Antifa who installed an app on his phone to allow them to communicate. The protest plan, according to the organizer, was “plain clothes and hard tactics.” That meant not dressing in black or wearing masks, which had been banned by police, but preparing for violence. At a subsequent meeting, one member of the group discusses the guns he has in his trunk. Another member hands Jared an ice pick. Jared immediately makes an excuse and takes the footage of local police who have already been monitoring the situation. Crowder ends the clip by focusing on the media.

Crowder ends the clip by focusing on the media response. Local media see the video and are offered a copy but aren’t interested in airing it. Instead, they run a standard report about student protesters. But national media were also present and also saw the clip of Antifa members planning for violence and, according to Crowder, no one wanted the footage.

Here’s my take on this. Media outlets are probably worried about getting scammed. They don’t know Crowder and the fact that he’s a YouTube host/comedian probably doesn’t inspire confidence. For all they know, the whole thing is a stunt and they probably don’t want to spend time or effort investigating. I’m not saying there’s no bias there, only that a local channel with a deadline and limited resources is probably less likely to go out on what looks like a limb.

The situation with national media is very different. A Nightline producer has time and resources to take a tape like this and verify the facts, talk with police, even interview the people shown in the clip to get their side. So it’s hard to understand why someone like that wouldn’t be interested in this video, except of course that it makes Antifa look pretty bad. Perhaps if there had been some actual Nazis present to help balance the narrative, but as it is the only story here is far left extremists preparing for violence to shut down a conservative speaker. That’s probably a little to clear-cut for Nightline.